ChatGPT is offline right now, according to OpenAI who confirmed there was an outage at 7 a.m. PT this morning. If you try to access the chatbot, you’ll be met with a timeout error, which goes beyond the typical “at capacity” message users see when OpenAI’s servers are overloaded.
Since the outage began, OpenAI says that traffic for ChatGPT is starting to improve “after initial fixes have been implemented.” There’s currently no window for when OpenAI plans to resolve the issue fully.
The outage only affects ChatGPT itself. OpenAI’s API and other research websites are still available, which should mean ChatGPT alternatives and Microsoft’s Bing Chat are still available. In addition, OpenAI’s other models, such as DALL-E 2, are available, as well.
OpenAI has restored service for ChatGPT Plus subscribers. It’s still unavailable for free users, but OpenAI says it’s working on restoring service soon.
Down Detector shows a steep drop in reports of an outage over the past hour, as users came back to the service for a short time. However, OpenAI said it continued to see instabilities, so it brought ChatGPT offline for maintenance.
This is the second major outage ChatGPT has seen in the last 90 days. The service experienced another outage on February 21, which brought down the chatbot for four and a half hours. You can keep an eye on OpenAI’s status page to see when the service becomes available again, as well as subscribe for updates.
Server capacity is one of the biggest issues with ChatGPT right now. OpenAI’s viral chatbot has become overwhelmingly popular, often showing “at capacity” messages when new users try to access the service. OpenAI’s status page shows 17 outages for the API over the past 90 days, some of which lasted over five hours. This could become a larger issue with time, especially as services like Snapchat move to integrate ChatGPT.
We’re keeping an eye on ChatGPT’s status, and we’ll continue to update this post as OpenAI reveals more about the situation. When it’s back online, make sure to read our roundup of the best ChatGPT tips to get the most out of your chatting.
Editors’ Recommendations
